


Project Cerberus

by BlackBirdAolen



Category: Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Corruption, Gen, Loss of a Friend, Project Cerberus, Swapped Roles, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-19
Updated: 2014-03-19
Packaged: 2018-01-16 07:29:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1337080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackBirdAolen/pseuds/BlackBirdAolen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris Redfield has disappeared about a year ago. In a struggle to find him, Albert Wesker and Jill Valentine teamed up - but they have to discover that something terrible has happened to their friend.</p><p> </p><p>  <a href="http://ask.fm/BlackBirdAolen">Got a fanfic idea for me?</a><br/><a href="http://cheroshseiphar.deviantart.com/">My deviantART - full of original fiction.</a><br/><a href="http://blackbirdaolen.tumblr.com/">Snippets and ramblings on my tumblr.</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	Project Cerberus

**Author's Note:**

> Currently looking to write fanfic for fanfic - meaning that if you are interested to receive a gift work from me, just hop onto my profile, check the list of the fandom I already wrote in, and then ask me for something. If you can write something for me in return, all the better!

"Are you ready to go in?" Albert Wesker gave his partner, Jill Valentine, a long look. She looked winded and exhausted after a hard fall, and a damned risky fight against hordes of twisted remnants of what once were human beings. The underground levels of the Umbrella Corporation held especially wicked traps, and it was all the worse since they knew it wasn't over yet. They still had to find what new horror the bioweapons laboratories were cooking up. "Come on, Jill, pull yourself together. We can't stay here."

"I know." Jill sounded a little more aggressive than intended. Then, with a softer voice, she repeated: "I know. We have to press on, and find out just what this 'Project Cerberus' is, exactly. I'm scared, Albert. There's no telling what will await us in there."

The blond male nodded softly, eyes focused on the double steel gate at the end of the corridor. The ground was littered with the corpses of the experiments, some of them barely even human any longer. It was frightening what the biomass-changing viruses could do, and all the more since they knew that a former friend had fallen into the hands of Umbrella. Chris Redfield, a former captain of the BSAA, had vanished about a year ago. Since then, they had been desperately following even the smallest lead, had traveled around half the world and been in at least 16 different locations, and still, there hadn't been a sign of him. It had seemed like they had been deliberately set up, and that big time.

Wesker looked down at his PDA, gritting his teeth when he saw that new information had come in. "Fuck... that's not good..." he murmured under his breath. He quickly scrolled through the reports, his worries deepening with every line he read. "Jill, we need to be careful. Really careful. I just got information on Project Cerberus, and I don't like it one bit."

He handed her the small device, while he checked if his pistols and his shotgun were reloaded and his ammunition was still sufficient. Jill was murmuring to herself while she read through the report, sometimes cursing under her breath. She, too, quickly checked her weapons, before giving Wesker his handheld back.

"So we are dealing with someone who should be able to work in intelligence, assassination, and close combat." She shook her head, looking somewhat pissed now. "I bet they needed Chris for that. Those bastards experimented on him, most likely."

"Calm down, Jill." Wesker tried to remain cool, but he, too, was growing increasingly enraged. "We will make them pay. But our priority is saving Chris right now, and that includes us calming the Hell down. If we go in there and make a mistake, we won't be able to regret it for a long time."

Wesker waited until Jill gave him the sign that she was ready. She looked completely calm and collected on the outside, but he knew that she was all but on the inside. She, as him, was furious about the prospects of having a former friend caught up in the sick experiments conducted by the Umbrella corporation. If he had already been altered, like the beasts they had encountered before, then everything was too late. There was no telling what would happen if they had to face him, and that was scaring both of them.

The double steel door opened when they approached, rousing new worries in them. The room behind the doors was barely illuminated, only a single column of light on what appeared to be an autopsy table. They exchanged a long look, nodded, and carefully stepped into the room, scanning it for any enemies. But it remained eerily quiet, which was more unsettling than the shrill cries of the infected that roamed the underground levels of the corporation. There was someone on that table, and from what they could see up to now, the person in question had brown hair – the same color as Chris.

Wesker only allowed himself to approach the table faster when he was sure that there was no threat in the room. He walked over to the unmoving figure, drawing in a sharp breath when he saw the familiar face. "No..." Jill whispered, lowering her gun and stepping closer, standing next to Wesker. "Chris..."

It was their friend, the friend they had lost a whole year ago. Chris's skin still looked warm, but Wesker didn't want to check for himself. Instead, he rested an arm around Jill, squeezing her shoulder. They had come closer to one another during their desperate search for Chris, so he felt like he needed to comfort her now. She squeezed his hand tightly, seeming to need and hold on to something to not completely lose her calm. This was worse than they had feared. Chris, by the looks of it, had died only moments prior to them entering the room.

"The syringe is still in his arm," Jill choked out after a while. Wesker carefully removed it, giving the silvery remains inside of it an angered glare. Because of this tiny thing, they had come too late. It looked like Chris had been injected with some substance akin to mercury. If the substance had similar properties, he could only imagine what pain Chris had gone through, if it only had been brief. "This just isn't fair..."

"I'm so sorry, Jill..." Wesker felt guilty, as though he had sealed his friend's fate when he had waited for a moment longer to check his weapons. "I failed you, and Chris."

"Don't say that." She leaned against him, seeking his warmth, and the comfort of his embrace. "Let's just call the cleanup team..."

Jill suddenly flinched and stepped back. Wesker needed a moment to realize why. Before, Chris's skin had looked rather pale, but now, his veins suddenly were a deep black against the bloodlessly white backdrop. Wesker shook his head in disbelief, stepping back when what they had assumed to be a corpse began twitching and moving.

Without opening his eyes, Chris Redfield sat up on the cold metal table, drawing in an audible breath. He sounded like he had been suffocated for a long time, the mere imagination of that made Wesker cringe. Even without apparent marks, there was a high chance that Chris had been tortured before he had been experimented on. The syringe he still held in his hand, Wesker realized, had just been the final step in a long chain of altering experiments.

With a sudden movement, Chris was in a crouching position, still naked as the day he was born. His eyes opened, making Wesker cringe once more and quickly raise his pistol. Those weren't the gentle eyes of Chris any longer, but the glowing red eyes of a maniacal beast. Chris's lips parted, revealing razor sharp teeth gleaming a brilliant white in the light, his muscles bulging where the black veins spread beneath his skin.

"Chris? Chris, do you recognize us?" Jill sounded shaken, and Wesker couldn't say he felt entirely steady either. This was their worst nightmare realized. They had to fight a former friend, under such twisted and fucked up circumstances. "Chris, it's us, Jill and Albert. Please, snap out of it!"

To Wesker's surprise, Chris shook his head, as though he tried to shake off this new change. Maybe it wasn't too late. The substances would need a while to take hold, and if they managed to keep Chris holding on to his humanity, it would be a longer struggle still. There had been a reported case that a former army member had been able to shake off the effects of the drugs administered by a team of Umbrella's scientists, though he doubted that this feat could simply be recreated. Even though Chris was more than fit to match this army guy, there was absolutely no guarantee that it might be repeated.

Again, those piercing red eyes fell onto them, and now, Chris seemed to be scrutinizing if either of them was a threat, or rather interesting prey. It was hard for Wesker to still think of his friend when he saw this cruel sneer, the stare seeming to pierce him so easily. There was no escaping, that much was for sure. Cerberus had awoken, and there was little they could do against it.

"So you finally showed up..." Chris's voice was deeper than before, much deeper. It sounded like it came straight from the underworld, and it made both Wesker and Jill tense up. "A little late, I would claim..."

Wesker swallowed, raising his pistol and aiming for Chris's head. "We were looking for you all over the world, Chris. We weren't sitting there and twiddled thumbs while you were in captivity."

"I beg to differ." Chris snickered, his body visibly tensing in preparation of jumping. He definitely looked like a merciless beast by now, and it was hard for Wesker to still remember Chris beyond the beast he had become. Incredible how a single moment could change his view on a person so much. But that was Umbrella's effect on its subjects. They changed in such a horrible way that it was almost impossible to still see anything human about them. "You abandoned me just now, Wesker, didn't you?"

"I didn't..." Wesker felt how he began shuddering. There was more than met the eye to Chris by now, and the change wasn't a pleasant one at all. "I didn't give up on you, Chris. You are still our friend..."

Chris snorted, his limbs shifting lightly, which gave him even more of a look of a beast, a werewolf maybe. "You are still aiming that pesky gun at me. You don't that to friends. You help them, right? Extend a hand to them. Don't struggle against them."

The last bit made Wesker twitch, and his finger tightened at the trigger, but didn't pull yet. He couldn't just do that. There was just so much still attached to the name, the person Chris Redfield. Wesker couldn't pull the trigger, and he was sure that Jill wouldn't be able to do that either.

That seemed to confuse the beast trying to completely consume Chris's body, and for a moment, there was a flash of those gentle, brown eyes came back to the cruel stare of the creature. It stoked a certain hope inside of Wesker, but he knew that he shouldn't be too convinced that it would change everything. And yet, there was this hope, this hope that Chris would shake this off and return to being normal, or as normal as he could be after the ordeal he went through.

But it wouldn't come that far.

Chris lunged forward all of a sudden, the movement much too fast to react to it. Wesker just felt the impact on his body, which knocked the air out of his lungs, and almost made him faint. He sucked in air desperately, trying to focus on Chris. He didn't want to fire blindly, as it might have hit Jill. If he had hurt his partner, he wouldn't have been able to forgive himself.

"I hate you so much for this, Wesker..." Chris growled into his ear, making the blond male freeze in place. "I hate you so much for taking everything away from me. You are the reason why I'm like this right now."

"No, that's not true, Chris..." Wesker gritted his teeth, trying to struggle and wrestle the other off, but had to realize that Chris felt like made of steel. His muscles bunched under what formerly was warm skin, now feeling white-hot and making it even harder for Wesker to breathe. "Get off me, please!"

Jill took over there, ramming her heel right into a sensitive space between Chris's ribs and making the brunet groan in pain. Wesker could free himself, being a bit shocked about Jill's sudden reaction. It appeared that the female simply had snapped, and no longer wanted to put up with the fact that her former friend had become such a monster. She was taking decisive action, and that again amused Chris – an unsettling sight indeed.

"This is it, Jill..." Chris looked positively mad, laughing like he truly was. "This is it! You never liked me all that much, didn't you?"

"That's not the truth." Jill sounded much firmer than Wesker had imagined her to sound like, if they encountered Chris in such a situation. "But what you have become and what you were are completely different things right now. You are a threat, and you need to be exterminated."

Wesker struggled to his feet, quickly pacing back next to Jill, who seemed to hold a staring contest with this ... thing. Wesker felt a chill shuddering down his spine when he realized that it might be much too late for Chris to be rescued any longer. Project Cerberus had been a success.

 


End file.
